Carver juror wants man freed

Sunday

Apr 7, 2019 at 11:54 AMApr 7, 2019 at 11:58 AM

John Little served on the jury that found Mark Carver guilty of first-degree murder. Now, he has second thoughts.

The Dallas heavy truck mechanic has had eight years to think about the decision he made as a juror in a murder trial involving the 2008 death of UNC Charlotte student Ira Yarmolenko. But he now fears he voted incorrectly.

"I asked (Carver attorney Chris Mumma) could I come and revoke my guilty verdict," Little said last week. "I'm upset, let me tell you. The thing about it is this man may be innocent. I have reasonable doubt now."

Even as a hearing which may offer Carver a new trial continues into a second week, Little won't be allowed to testify. Mumma said case law dictates a juror can't impeach their own verdict.

But when Mumma reached out to the 12 original jurors last month, Little responded within a matter of days. Other jurors responded, but only Little agreed to talk with Mumma about the case, Mumma said.

Little signed an affidavit saying with evidence now publicized, he would've never voted guilty.

"I'm upset this information was not given to me and the rest of the jurors," Little said. "Had I seen this information, that jury would've hung."

Little said he was one of two jurors who believed Carver wasn't guilty when the group first began its deliberation. He had, he said, many questions about the case as a whole.

Nobody believed the prosecution's motive, that Carver and cousin Neal Cassada saw the 20-year-old aspiring photographer taking their picture doing something wrong and decided to retaliate, Little said. And he had questions about the DNA evidence the state presented, including why it took two months to swab the car.

What convinced Little to go along with the other jurors was testimony from Mount Holly Police Detective William Terry, Little said.

Terry testified he was present for an SBI interrogation where Carver admitted to knowing Yarmolenko's height.

"The linchpin was how did he know how tall she was?" Little said. "Well, he told him. That was the thing that convinced me and another (juror). Because we didn't buy the motives that (the prosecution) gave."

But jurors weren't shown video of Carver discussing Yarmolenko's height at trial. And had Little seen then what he's seen since, footage of the interrogation showing the SBI agent standing up and putting his hand near his face before Carver indicated Yarmolenko's height, he said his opinion would've been different.

"What really gets me is them leading him on and basically, they did him like they did Brendan Dassey," Little said, referencing a Wisconsin man whose murder conviction was profiled on the Netflix series "Making a Murderer."

Little said he also didn't know Yarmolenko's car was touched by officers not wearing gloves before DNA was collected, that a partial DNA profile of Yarmolenko's fingernail scrapings excluded Carver and Cassada as contributors, that DNA from a male not belonging to Carver or Cassada was found on one of Yarmolenko's ligatures, or that Carver's carpal tunnel and radial tunnel syndrome affected his grip strength.

He also said he wasn't aware that two men later saw Carver acting normally at the fishing hole after the body was found, not wet or sweaty.

But he also didn't know about incidents in Carver's past presented in court this week: that Carver had accidentally shot his son during a wrestling match about a year before, or that he was taken to the seventh floor of CaroMont Regional Medical Center after driving in an all-terrain vehicle to his ex-wife's house and shooting it up.

He didn't know about discrepancies Carver told police about when Cassada came to the fishing hole.

Little said he's read news coverage about the hearing, which began Tuesday, and none of that has reduced his regret on voting guilty.

"It still doesn't change my mind," Little said. "It's not relevant. I don't know that it would've made a whole lot of difference. That wasn't really relevant to the case at hand."

Armed with Terry's testimony, and the fact he had a daughter around Yarmolenko's age, Little made the decision to send Carver to prison for life.

"I've had family members put in prison, several," he said. "I know what his family and what he's going through. I've had family members killed, though, so I also know what it's like to be on the other end when somebody has been murdered. I've also been on the other end where family has killed someone. I wanted to be right and I wanted to be sure and I wanted to go by what I was given."

Eight years after the fact, Little can't escape the case completely, in part because he catches a glimpse of the scene on his daily commute.

"I cross over that river right near there where it happened every day," he said. "So, yeah, I think about it."

You can reach Adam Lawson at 704-869-1842 or on Twitter @GazetteLawson.

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